Difference between Windows server 2012 and 2016

Performance and scalability

Feature description	Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 Standard and Datacenter	Windows Server 2016 Standard and Datacenter
Physical (host) memory support	Up to 4 TB per physical server	Up to 24 TB per physical server (6x)
Physical (host) logical processor support	Up to 320 LPs	Up to 512 LPs
Virtual machine memory support	Up to 1 TB per virtual machine	Up to 12 TB per virtual machine (12x)
Virtual machine virtual processor support	Up to 64 VPs per virtual machine	Up to 240 VPs per virtual machine (3.75x)

Security

Level of support key

 Not supported     Limited support     Fully supported   

Feature description	Windows Server 2008 R2	Windows Server 2012 R2	Windows Server 2016
Shielded Virtual Machines
Just Enough Administration
Just-in-Time Administration
Credential Guard
Remote Credential Guard
Device Guard
AppLocker
Windows Defender
Control Flow Guard
Enhanced threat detection

Software-defined datacentre: Compute

Level of support key

 Not supported     Limited support     Fully supported   

Feature description	Windows Server 2008 R2	Windows Server 2012 R2	Windows Server 2016
Cluster OS Rolling Upgrade
Linux and FreeBSD workloads
Hot add and remove for disk, memory, and network
RDS RemoteFX vGPU
Server management tools
Nano Server installation option
VM Load Balancing

Software-defined datacentre: Networking

Level of support key

 Not supported     Limited support     Fully supported   

Feature description	Windows Server 2008 R2	Windows Server 2012 R2	Windows Server 2016
Network Controller
Microsegmentation
Software Load Balancer

Software-defined datacentre: Storage

Level of support key

 Not supported     Limited support     Fully supported   

Feature description	Windows Server 2008 R2	Windows Server 2012 R2	Windows Server 2016
Storage Spaces Direct
Storage Quality of Service
Data deduplication
Storage Replica
Storage health monitoring
High Performance NVMe device support
Persistent Memory for maximum Application Performance
Scale Out File Server
VM Storage Resiliency

Cloud-ready application platform

Level of support key

 Not supported     Limited support     Fully supported   

Feature description	Windows Server 2008 R2	Windows Server 2012 R2	Windows Server 2016
Windows Server containers
Hyper-V containers
Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration
Windows PowerShell 5.1